Lord Norton

The House of Commons is the body through which the people determine how they are to be governed. Through elections to the Commons, the people choose the government and through those elections also hold the government to account. Accountability for public policy is clear and direct. There is one entity – the party (or parties) in government – responsible for public policy. Electors know that and at a general election choose either to keep the government in office or to turn it out.

The House of Lords recognises this: it therefore does not seek to challenge but rather to complement the work of the elected House. The Lords carries out tasks that the Commons often does not have the time or the political will to fulfil. Limited time in the Commons means there is often insufficient opportunity to examine thoroughly the detail of Bills. The Lords devotes most of the time to detailed scrutiny. It accepts that the Commons is entitled to determine the principle – the ends – of legislation. The Lords concentrates on the means, ensuring that Bills are crafted in such a way as to meet their intended goals. In so doing, the Lords adds value to the political process without challenging the primacy of the people’s elected representatives.

I advance two propositions. First, that the functions of the Lords are well fulfilled. Second, electing the House would undermine, indeed largely destroy, the capacity of the House to fulfil those functions. The Government accepts the first but, in its reform proposals, has failed to grasp the second. Electing the second chamber is not self-evidently the democratic option – by dividing accountability it can undermine the capacity of the people to hold government to account (since policies may emerge for which it is not directly responsible) and can sweep away the very benefits that the present system delivers.

ConservativeHome has teamed up with LeftFootForward and LibDemVoice to produce a magazine called 'Litmus' that is being distributed at all of the party conferences. The magazine examines six hot topics including climate change, electoral reform and immigration. Please visit the website here. The Conservative contributors to the magazine are Therese Coffey MP, Damian Green MP, Andrew Lilico, Tim Montgomerie, Lord Norton and Stephan Shakespeare.

As a taster we today publish Lord Norton's contribution. Philip, a Conservative peer, is also Professor of Government at the University of Hull.

The calls for a change to the electoral system and election of the second chamber derive from a false premise – that our political system ‘is broken’. It isn’t. There is a case for change to parts of the system, but the fundamentals are sound, including the method of electing MPs and the form of the second chamber. Indeed the two are linked in enabling the UK to have a political system in which government is far more accountable than in many if not most comparable countries.

At the heart of any system of representative democracy is accountability – those elected by the people being answerable to the people for their actions. Under our system, there is usually one body – the party in government – that is responsible for public policy. Electors know precisely who is responsible for what happens in government and can turn that body out at the next election. Election day, as the philosopher Sir Karl Popper memorably put it, is ‘judgement day’. This accountability is maintained through the first-past-the-post electoral system and also through having one elected chamber. The House of Lords carries out valuable functions that the House of Commons does not always have the time, the political will or the resources to fulfil, but does not challenge the electoral supremacy of MPs. The country thus maintains a direct accountability of government while deriving the benefits of a second chamber. That combination is distinctive and beneficial.

Getting rid of election by first-past-the-post and replacing it with the Alternative Vote (AV) or one of the systems of proportional representation on offer would certainly change things, but not for the better. There is little to commend the Alternative Vote, which could be why it is rarely used elsewhere in parliamentary elections (only Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea employ it). The first-past-the-post system in contrast is widely used. The claim is that AV produces an MP who has the support of 50% or more of the electors. Except it doesn’t. It effectively engineers a majority by giving the same weight to an elector’s second and third preferences as to the first preference. AV has the potential to produce far more distorted results than under the present system (it is estimated that the Conservative Party would have lost even more seats than it did in 1997 had AV been employed) as well as the potential to create more hung Parliaments than under first-past-the-post. There is also little appetite for change. In the 2008 Audit of Political Engagement, most of those questioned were satisfied or were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with how votes cast in a general election were translated into seats in the House of Commons. The net satisfaction rate was +15. There is no sound case or overwhelming public demand for change.

Nor is there a sound case or overwhelming demand for replacing the existing House of Lords with a body of elected politicians that would simply replicate the House of Commons. The House of Lords is notable for being a body of experience and expertise. More than 20 per cent of its members are not aligned to any of the political parties. It adds value to the political process by engaging in detailed examination of legislation and the actions of government. It makes a marked difference to the quality of law in the UK in a way that an elected chamber would not. One poll found that electors give greater weight, for example, to the detailed examination of Bills, and to the integrity of the appointments process, than to election. Election would challenge the basic accountability of the present system, creating the potential for clashes between the two chambers and for outcomes that favour not electors but parties and interest groups. Wholly elected second chambers are not the norm and do not necessarily work well. Having an elected second chamber is not self-evidently the ‘democratic’ option and once one realises that the sound-bite claims for an elected second chamber fall away.

Trust in the political system has not collapsed. It is trust in politicians that has reached a new low. Electing the same politicians by different means, be it to the first or the second chamber, is not going to restore trust. The real problem is behaviour, not structures.

Lord Norton of Louth, a Professor of Government at Hull University, is a former Chairman of the House of Lords Committee on the Constitution and a blogger.

Fundamental to any representative democracy is the concept of accountability. Our electoral system facilitates but does not guarantee the return of a single-party government. The winning party has a coherent programme of public policy that it put before the electors and for which it can be held to account at the next election.

There is one body – the party in government – that is responsible for public policy. There is no scope for buck-passing or shirking of responsibility. Electors can judge it in terms of what it promised – the manifesto is a benchmark – and if dissatisfied can sweep it from office. Critics focus on the hiring element of the process, but – as the distinguished philosopher Sir Karl Popper noted – tend to ignore the firing part. There is, in our system, a fundamental accountability that is lacking in alternative systems.

The electoral system does not guarantee single-party government. It can on occasion result in a hung Parliament, as we are presently experiencing. However, this is the exception and not the rule. Under alternative systems, it is likely to be the rule. Current experience points to the inherent problems of the alternatives.

Alex Salmond has referred to a hung Parliament as a ‘people’s Parliament’. It is the opposite: it is a politician’s parliament. Policy is the result of post-election bargaining. The people do not get a look in. Compromises are reached which may bear no relationship to what electors want, which were never placed before them, and which they may have no opportunity to pass judgement on at the next election if parties stand as independent entities: there is no one body to call to account.

Lord Norton of Louth, a Professor of Government, former Chairman of the House of Lords Committee on the Constitution, and blogger, dismantles the Government's case for an elected House of Lords.

The Government’s White Paper on Lords reform is a sorry affair. It
fails completely to advance any principled argument for change. It
bandies about terms such as democracy and legitimacy without defining
them or seeking to justify them. It has no philosophic base, relying
on terms which it naively believes to be self-evident, but which are
actually contested concepts.

Electing the second chamber is not necessarily the ‘democratic’
option. At the heart of a representative democracy is the concept of
accountability. The British political system has the benefit of core
accountability. There is one body – the party in government, chosen
through elections to the House of Commons – that is responsible for
public policy. If electors do not approve of what it does, it cannot
blame others – there is no divided accountability – and, crucially,
they can remove it from office at the next election. Electing other
bodies that can then claim the mandate of the popular vote undermines
that core accountability. In the event of conflict between two elected
bodies, who do the electors hold responsible for the outcomes?